by theresa may taking questions from members of the house of commons. later, take a look at the state of politics as we head into the midterm elections. ♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," syndicated columnist mona charen . she talks about her book, "sex matters: how modern feminism lost touch with science, love, and common sense." brian: your new book, "sex matters." to find what that word means. mona: the phrase? i wish i could say i came up with the title myself. it is actually my friend and colleague who had this inspiration.

it means that sex in the sense of gender matters, that we are different. it is ok to acknowledge that. the other aspect is a sexual behavior matters. it has effects on people. it cannot be taken to casually. brian: when did you get this idea? mona: i have been thinking about the issues my entire adult life. as a woman who came of age when feminism was really at its peak in the 1970's and early 1980's, i was influenced. i went to a woman's college where the feminist message was prominent. i was always a little skeptical of it. not entirely. we can get into how you define feminism, but i have lived it now for some many decades. feminism, while of course we all

believe in equal rights for women and equal human dignity, the tendency in our society, propelled by the feminist movement, has been toward androgyny instead of toward a rich appreciation of our differences and an embrace of the complementarity of the sexes. why do we learn in your book that you used to be called timmy? gender identity is a sensitive subject and i try to treat it as carefully as i could. dysphoria have gender , children in particular who are unhappy about their sex needs tremendous compassion and sensitivity about the way they are treated. but what i am cautioning about is that we are in the midst of tos rage in our society

decide when kids are as young as two or three years old and the child says i want to be the other sex, parents are instructed that if they don't fulfill this wish on the part of startchildren and dressing them in the clothes and cut their hair in the way of the other sex, they will be damaging them psychologically. i point out that when i was a little girl, i was kind of a tomboy. i liked climbing trees and playing with trucks and doing boy things. i had older brothers and those were the toys that were around. there was a phase i went through where i wanted to be called timmy. i wanted to be a little boy. i say in the book i shudder to think what would have happened to me in this era. it was a phase. i outgrew it. i am very delighted to be female. i point out that 85 or 90% of children who express the desire

to be the other sex at some time in their childhood outgrow it after they go through puberty. toorry a lot about this rush gratify what a child says. brian: how old are your three boys? mona: 26, 24, is 22. brian: how much did you rely on them for an up close and personal account of what's going on in the sex lives of young men? mona: to a degree. i certainly asked them about what goes on and how they see things. they are all millennials so they have that perspective. i also spoke to other young people. both in college and recent graduates, to get a feel for the climate. brian: where? mona: students at a number of colleges. ,everal in washington, d.c. some of the a skype in other

places. brian: what did you learn? mona: there is a lot of unhappiness among young people. a lot of discomfort about dating and relationships and about the tension between men and women. there are no rules. there is a lot of room for confusion. ,ne of the men i spoke to said we are wounded. our hearts have been broken. when we approach the other sex, we do so with heartedness. -- guardedness. there is a fear of being vulnerable. and a desire for rules. rules about how you are supposed to act. understanding, which is part of what i plead for in this book, that we return to a comfort with the fact there are

differences between men and women that are natural and that we should understand them better. obviously there is great variety , but we should understand them and not therefore assume your boyfriend or your husband is if he is nottive meeting all of your emotional needs. ,rian: on the political side the longest piece of video we have shown on this program, about five minutes long, you are going to see 30 different clips. it will be self-explanatory. it starts back in the 1960's and comes all the way to the present. you have not seen this, i know. i want you to tell us your reaction. [video clip] >> president kennedy took me on a two or of the white house and

ended up in a bedroom. that is where our first encounter happened and where i lost my virginity. >> johnson came in her office one day. he locked the door and they had sex on a desk at the white house. >> all i am trying to do is launch a career. >> don't you think this looks bad for you as a married chairman of the house ways and means committee? >> my wife is in on it. toshe was put on the payroll work from 9-to-5 the same as everybody else. she says she was put on the payroll to be my mistress. it is a total lie. >> his adultery started soon in your marriage? >> immediately. >> by your first anniversary. >> i went over to the main house and there he was with this woman. >> under present circumstances, this campaign cannot go on.

photograph.is dishonorware of the that has befallen me in the last three years. i do not want to visit that this honor on the senate. >> i did have a relationship that was not appropriate. it was wrong. >> at the same time you were doing exactly the same thing. >> i did not do the same thing. i have never lied under oath. i have never been involved in a felony. >> i have heard you deeply and i beg your forgiveness. i must set the example that i hope president clinton will follow. >> like all marriages, ours is not perfect. none of us are. but we choose to work together as a family. >> to my wife and my family, i apologize for what i have caused. >> he was arrested in june for lewd conduct.

tonight, a new level. after a grand jury charged him with six felonies, all related to a campaign affair. >>'s political career was shattered after it was revealed sent lurid text messages to pages. >> what i want as opposed to somebody else. i make one more apology to people of faith. >> to recount what happened. >> i resigned in the context of sex scandals, a phrase i think easily describes it. a msnbc is announcing political contributor will no longer be appearing after five women have come forward alleging sexual harassment. >> i did not send that tweet. it was a fairly common one. people make fun of my name all the time. >> what i did was wrong, and i

regret it, he said. the judge suggested that was not enough. nothing is more stunning than having serial child molester and speak or of the house in the same sentence. >> in a nearly -- a newly uncovered settlement is the sixth one against o'reilly. nbc forlauer fired from alleged inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace. roses suspends charlie after the washington post reported eight women associated with his pbs program are accusing him of sexual harassment. turning offllister the lights in his louisiana office. seconds later, he reappears with the woman believed to be on his staff. then this. a kiss nearly 30 seconds long. >> the allegations are simply not true.

others i remember very differently. >> frank said he never attempted to have sexual contact with any staffer. but he admitted to having "an uncomfortable conversation about surrogacy with women who worked for him." >> a pro-life champion who encouraged his ex-wife to have two abortions and talked one of his mistresses into another. >> multiple women have accused him of harassment. acquisitionss the -- accusations but admits to paying a settlement. taxpayer dollars to settle a sexual harassment claim, and never paid taxpayers back that money. >> this is the shopping mall where some say it was common knowledge that roy moore would flirt with teenage girls when he was in his 30's. >> some women who were romantically involved with him

in the past who have described repeated episodes of nonconsensual violence. brian: most of those were reporting from the media. there are two things. one is about sex out of -- however you want to say it, matrimony. the second thing is lying. what are we supposed to make of all that? mona: first of all i can understand why it is the longest clip you have shown. there is so much. brian: we did not get to half of them. mona: this whole #metoo thing has been interesting. my take on it, in keeping with of book, is that it is a cry despair and fury on the part of if it is not perceived this way by everyone, it is saying the sexual there has always

been bad behavior, but the sexual revolution unleashed the gates for a lot more of it. why? because the sexual revolution said sex is recreation, it's fun , our old hangups needs to go by the wayside. i think it gave permission for bad men to be even worse. there are still plenty of decent men out there who don't behave this way. all of the guys in your clip were powerful in entertainment or politics, where they have the ability to exert that kind of control over others. by the way, no women. interesting, right? if men and women are exactly the same and have the same proclivities for bad behavior, what you expect to see about half of the people accused of sexual harassment, sexual bad behavior be women? you do not see them.

they engage in other bad behavior, but this happens to be a particularly male thing. this, the lying part of when you see a politician or media figure after they have been accused and they say it's not true, what is your reaction? mona: it is a staggering. the lying is the greatest sin, maybe. if somebody were to come forward and say, i didn't -- one of the people, livingston, said you caught me, and i am resigning because that's the right thing to do. he urged bill clinton to do the same thing. that is better than the outright denial. bill clinton wagging his finger, dying it, anthony weiner, all of them. bill o'reilly. first of all, they behave atrociously towards women.

and then they behave atrociously towards everyone buy it insulting our intelligence. brian: why do wives stay with them? mona: that is complicated. in many cases they have children. to divorce is to break up a family and cause tremendous pain to a lot of people. ever presume to judge anybody who finds themselves in that situation. brian: in your book -- if i can find it -- you write this. to many young men behave like pigs. mona: yes, they do. one of the things i have noticed is that, as with so many things in our culture, questions about crisis hasampus rape divided people. people on the right say it's all a hoax, it does not exist. say we have aleft misogynistic society that raises

meant to be rapists. what i tried to say is, i don't to bewe raise men rapists, but i do think it's wrong for conservatives to deny there is a problem. with all the statistics i have looked at and the students i spoke to, it's undeniable that the gates have swung open for a lot of terrible behavior on the part of a lot of men. some of them get caught and many do not. brian: you write in your book about liberals reaction to their side getting caught with these sexual diversions and the conservatives. how do both sides react to it and why? mona: in the past i would have said, and i do take some of the major feminists to task for their excuse making for bill clinton after they had come down so hard on clarence thomas and senator bob pack with. that was hypocrisy because they

felt clinton was too valuable. a funny thing has happened in the interim. you now have a republican in the white house who is also accused of terrible behavior, and republicans including religious leaders making excuses for him for political reasons. the other thing i would say is that in the past -- i once wrote a column comparing the way -- jerry studds , these congressmen were both found to have committed improper acts with pages on capital hill. jerry studds was a democrat from massachusetts, openly gay. he was returned to office even

misdemeanor, his constituents thought. that i get the name wrong? that was -- he was a republican, that was the young lady. mona: thank you. he was drummed out of office by his constituents. at the time i said, there you go. conservative voters are holding their politicians to a higher standard. right now, the democrats are doing a pretty good job of trying to hold their side accountable. i do not know what switched, but it has been noticeable they have been willing to go after schneiderman and others. brian: around this issue we are talking about, you had a moment at the recent cpac event. i'm sure a lot of you watching have seen it. i want to run that again and ask you to explain how that happened

and what's the fallout yet you're at cpac -- fallout? you are at cpac. let's watch. [video clip] i am disappointed in people from our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women who are sitting in the white house, who bragged about their extramarital affairs, who brag about mistreating women. rcause he happens to have an after his name, we look the other way. readys a party that was to endorse the republican party, endorse roy moore for the senate in the state of alabama, even though he was a credibly accused child molester. you cannot claim you stand for

women. and put up with that. >> of this is a really interesting point. there has been this -- woman in the back yelling "it's not true. could you hear that? mona: i could. i should say my rough guess is 35 to 40% of the audience was with me and was applauding. but there were a good number of people who were livid and very angry, saying it was a witch hunt, that he'd been framed, that it wasn't true. they seemed to believe that. brian: how much did you think about that before you did it? mona: i did not think of what words of was going to use, but i was extremely concerned that we

not be seen to be making excuses for our side. the other thing that was upsetting about who cpac invited was that they had invited marion le pen, a member of the national front party in france. i extremely worried about the conservative movement in america . brian: let's look at the reaction to that. [video clip] guys,speaking of bad there was quite an interesting person who was on this stage the other day. her name is mary and le pen. pen.rion le why was she here? reason she wasy here is because she is named le pen. the name is a disgrace.

her grandfather is a racist and a not see. -- nazi. she claims that she stands for him. the fact that cpac invited her is a disgrace. [applause] brian: did you plan that? mona: not in those words, but yes, i had something to say. brian: what trigger that on marion le pen? of --usin or the needs mona: marine le pen. cpac has not been covering itself with glory. last year they invited milo yiannopoulos. brian: why did you go? mona: i wanted to speak to them directly. brian: what has happened to you? mona: i received support from

liberals, i received a lot of support from conservatives who say i do speak for them and they are sorry there are not more. angry received some responses. but that happens. brian: when did you personally decide to be anti-trump? mona: it was not a decision. from the time i was aware of him in public life, i thought he was a repellent figure. back when i was living in new york, i remember him parading on the tabloids his adventures with his mistress while he was married. i am still pretty old-fashioned about behavior. this is something i hope to talk with feminists about, to say, we women should all be together about what is the proper way to treat women.

i think we can find common ground about that. marriedhould begin with men should be expected to be gentlemen. all men should be expected to be gentlemen. the reason i keep coming back to this is gloria steinem in the new york times, defending bill clinton, went through this litany of why his relationship with monica lewinsky was not a problem. andsaid it was consensual kind of implied monica lewinsky had been the instigator. never once did she say, bill clinton was a married man and that was part of what was so awful. brian: here is a little bit of gloria steinem, for those who may not remember. [video clip] upside of thethe downside. this is an outpouring of energy and true democracy like i have

never seen in my very long life. [cheering] wide in age, deep in diversity, and remember the constitution does not begin with, i the president. it begins with we the people. brian: where did that march in was january -- that 21, 2017. where does that fit in what you are writing about? mona: i think there are a number of women who are feeling furious about the way men have behaved. i'm not sure that they would diagnose it the same way i do. i know feminists tend to think that men have always been beasts and that it has been worse in the past and now it is getting better somehow because they have been more educated by feminism.

i have a different take. i think human nature is what it is and people have bad impulses. part of the task of any civilization is to curb those. as somebody who was a child in the 1960's and who grew up with feminism, i have the very strong sense that feminism actually rapacious males behavior more possible. it really made it easier for the bad guys out there. most men are not bad, but some are. brian: you say hollywood became feminism's mouthpiece. why? mona: they repeated the ideas the feminists promoted. they de-fame to the nuclear family. that until we destroyed the family, women would not achieve equality.

hollywood made movies about domestic abuse and movies that portrayed family life as essentially pathological. of course it can be. in most instances, it's a treasure. brian: did you read "feminine mystique" when it came out? mona: no, i was in first grade. brian: have you read it? mona: closely. brian: she had a family. mona: she is one of the only major second wave feminists who had children. most of them did not. the other thing that is interesting is later in her life she actually perhaps in part because she was a mother, she backtracked on a lot of the things she had written and wrote another book called the second

stage where she retracted a lot of it and got criticized for that. she has been dead for a number of years, but here she is in 1993. [video clip] i was technically a housewife, but i could not get rid of the itch to do something. i was freelancing for a magazine. like secret drinking in the morning. none of the other mothers in that suburb were working. , one after wrote for the other, either turned it down or rewrote it. i knew i would have to write the book, the feminine mystique. brian: what impact did that have? mona: it was tremendous. people saying it pulled the trigger on history. it certainly changed our entire society's perception of women's place in society and of what women want.

that's why i do a close analysis of her book and i go back to show that it was based on a very faulty social science and anecdotal evidence and her own prejudices. it would not hold up today. we would label it junk science. at the time it was rapturously received. it was a huge bestseller. it was serialized in the women's magazines she scorned. brian: what are the chances your book will have the same impact? mona: it's going to, brian. brian: who do you want to read this book? mona: i want everyone to read it. i would be happy if young men and women read it and get a different take on how we got here and why relations between men and women are so screwed up now. brian: have your boys read it? mona: yes. brian: did they react different to it? you have three.

mona: they have read it in different stages when it was in process. once it is published they will read the whole thing. brian: do they ever say anything like, you got this wrong? mona: not really. one of them said, that's an interesting perspective, you make a good point, another one said, i can't wait for this book to come out so all my friends can read it. but he is prejudiced. brian: do they all think alike? mona: they don't. brian: how does that fit with you? they don't all march to the conservative drum. mona: i must have done something right when i said we were raising children to think for themselves, because they do. brian: did you fight them? anybody that would disagree? mona: it's always pleasant when people agree with you. you always think people who agree with you are smart.

disagrees son who with me on many things and i would never say that about him, because he does make good cases. i think he keeps me sharper because he forces me to confront the other side in my very own home. brian: when you started out as a columnist, how many women were writing columns? mona: one or two. geyer,as georgie and there were a few. there was a woman with the new york times. a handful. brian: was there any kickback to you because you are a woman, when you started? mona: there was resistance because i was not a liberal woman and the editors who were going to make room for a woman felt like they were not getting their money's worth. there was a little bit of that. i could not be pigeonholed. brian: when you turn on the

television now and look at the news networks, you see a tremendous number of women reporting the news. what changed? when i started there were almost none. mona: that's true. there were restrictions on where they could be. the had to be in a certain part of the balcony, all kinds of other things. one of the good aspects of feminism, women have now been allowed to spread their wings and go where they wish and do what they want. i am all for that. i think that has been a great boon for women and our society. mona: your book has a subheading that has to do with marks. what are they doing in your book? mona: i went back and read a lot of the lackluster feminist tracts of the 1970's -- blockbuster feminist tracts of the 1970's.

at the time our intellectual climate was dominated by freud and marks -- marx. so outu go back, it is of date. and yet it was incredibly important in their thinking. i know the irony that the feminists got a lot of their views from two dead white european males, which is kind of amusing. and also because neither freud nor marx has held up well at all. both have been discredited. point?what was freud's mona: freud had a schema of how the mind works. he believed the root of adult neuroses was a childhood drama he described as the oedipal drama that happens in early childhood where little boys want

to marry their mothers and kill their fathers and little girls, the reversal, they call that the electra complex. boys,r side of this is when they see naked little girls believe girls have been castrated and girls believe themselves to have been castrated, therefore they have penis envy. it is all very elaborate. it has been really dismissed by the field of psychology and psychiatry. people still acknowledge that, of course, the therapeutic setting is good for people. very much so. but the freudian schema of how the brain works, all of that has been discredited. there is no such thing as being id, the ego, the superego. all of that is considered unscientific. brian: totally out of context,

you need to tell us why. page 162. imagine if german chancellor angela merkel posed topless. would be a positive statement that she is free from "body image issues"? is it repressed because she never forgets to donna blouse? why did you bring up angela merkel? mona: this was a section in which i say we send confusing messages to young people. young women -- i don't envy them. a story i put in the book about a number of women athletes who have posed topless for sports illustrated. , i of them i quoted who said want -- i am proud of my body and i want to help young women who might have body image

issues. that is a crock. women should be dignified. they should remember that when you disrobe, it is hard for people to take you seriously. a man looking at a picture of a topless woman is not going to say, look at that fantastic athlete. isn't it wonderful she does not have problems with body image? he's going to think about sex. he is not going to think about her in a respectful way. merkel,hy i said angela the chancellor of germany, would not take off her blouse to prove she does not have body image issues. she wants to be respected. if women want to be respected, they have to behave in a way that will illustrate that. brian: you sent me on a mission because i read it in your book when you're talking about sexual assault on campus, about the

website called not alone.gov. all,t to ask you first of what's your perception of what is going on on college campuses? mona: it complicated. it is a long chapter. behavior. lot of bad there is also a lot of mixed signals. students are encouraged to engage in hookup culture, which involves getting very drunk and then hooking up with people when you are very drunk. it is kind of sex first and get to know you later. many students do not participate in this and it is not universal. but there is a lot of it. brian: seems overwhelmingly a majority. mona: it is unclear from statistics. i would say there is a tone of that is how you socialize,

especially newly arriving freshman. that is what they do because that's how they break into the campus. that's when the majority of rape accusations are leveled, it is mostly young women who have just arrived on campus. it is drunken coupling with people they do not know and has no pre-existing relationship with. something like 75% or 80% of these accusations of rape happen after these drunken encounters. that's one part of it. the other part of it is men and women have different sex drives and different signals. i mention in the book that -- i remember when i was young. men can be -- can interpret what we see as being polite, they can interpret as encouragement. men can be persistent.

they have testosterone. i talk about the psychological effects as well as the physical ones. it makes you more confident, it makes you more insistent. a lot of women find themselves in situations where a man is very insistent, they are no longer interested. the effects of the alcohol have worn off. they do it anyway because he is insistent. the next morning they tell their friends what happened, and their friends say, you were raped. that's the way a lot of these go. not all of them. there are rapes and there are some young guys who deserve to be in prison for what they do. schneiderman, choking people and so forth. brian: the attorney general new york. mona: yes, those are crimes.

many other examples of what leads to these accusations are murky. it is not clear. unfortunately, it is the result of a hookup culture that is not healthy and is not something women would choose. they say so in the polling. even men are not so happy with it. womenind -- both men and when you ask, do you wish there were more opportunities to form relationships, they say yes. brian: first of all, notalone.gov, it is the department of justice. overall, what it shows once you get in are how many grants are given out every year. anybody can get on here. you can get on in your home. if you notice, there are hundreds of thousands of dollars given out across the country.

$250otal for a year is million given ethnicities, universities, counties. $900,000 backnce. in 2017. the town of freeport illinois got $459,000. gotfax county virginia $900,000. you go on and on. most of these grants are about $300,000. there are hundreds and hundreds of them issued by the justice department all to deal with sexual harassment. how did we get there and what's your opinion of the federal taxpayer paying for these things? mona: they not only give money, but they give guidelines.

one of the things the justice department discourages is programs that say -- encourage women to limit drinking. and men. they say that is out of scope. that is victim blaming. you are not allowed to spend money on that. they have conflated -- and this is kind of a victory of the feminist point of view -- they have conflated sexual-harassment with sexual assault. i am keen to make that distinction. there is a world of difference between being sexual heart -- sexually harassed and being assaulted, which is a criminal act. i don't like this melding together. it blurs lines that ought not be blurred. brian: if you live in decatur, illinois and you get no money from the government, why'd you

want taxpayer money going to sexual-harassment reasons? where does that come from? mona: we borrow it from china. you could say the same about a million other government grants out there. the federal leviathan is an enormous. brian: this comes from the violence against women act. that, by the way, was supported by republicans and democrats. through the years, republican and democratic presidents have signed the bill to spend this money. is anybody checking this to see how it's being spent? mona: people don't check any government programs, for the most part. there is the congressional accountability office. it issues reports and they are ignored. can you think of a program that ever ended because it was ineffective or wasteful? i cannot. --an: they shut down the cav

cab, the civil aeronautics board. mona: fair enough. and that was a good move. brian: in case any viewers want to know, get on notalone.gov. mona: representatives and -- and senators like to say i voted for a program that will help combat sexual assault. they vote for this money and tell constituents, i am for this, my opponent is against it. most of these things cannot be solved by spending. these are cultural issues that have to be solved by changes in attitudes and behaviors. brian: you write about a woman named emma who was a student at columbia university.

you went right there in the same area. we are going to see video of her. this goes back to 2014. columbia'sing on campus with a mattress. you can tell us why you brought this up. college. senior in i am a visual arts major. for my senior thesis i will be doing a piece called mattress performance, or carry that weight, where i will be carrying this mattress with me everywhere i go for as long as i attended the same school as my rapist. brian: why did you bring this up? mona: one of the pieties of the feminist movement is women never live. you have to believe all women. i think that is overly broad.

people live for lots of reasons. for lots of reasons. the department of justice percent of rape claims are not true. in her case there is grave doubt. -- theversity found that officials in new york city, the university after doing a review found she had not been raped. the man she accused was able to provide facebook messages she had sent him after the suppose ,t rape that said she loved him and i miss you, and we need some time together, so on and so forth. brian: but she took this mattress everywhere she went. mona: and that became a cultural meme. mattresses showed up on other campuses, too. the new york times wrote about it and she was declared to be

kind of the joan of arc of campus rape for a while. you don't hear much about her anymore, especially because the man she accused won his case against columbia. columbia apologized for the way he was treated. brian: why would columbia university, a well-known ivy league school, allow somebody to carry a mattress? mona: it was fashionable, i guess. as --anted to be seen they are terrified of being accused of not handling these accusations with enough sensitivity. to have lots of counselors. harvard, i think, has 49 title ix. brian: 54. mona: thank you. educate --ere to

adjudicate. brian: there are 54 people who work on harvard's campus to add icate these. adjud mona: yes, and there are claims that male students rights have been violated by these courts. it is a mess and kids are not happy. brian: under your chapter, family, i want to read this because of the statistics. for kids raised by single mothers, the poverty rate is 37.1%. when harry truman was president, only 5% of all births were taught on what mothers. i nixon years, the rate doubled. it took off. nearly 40% -- more than 40% of all births were to unmarried women.

what happened? mona: we decided marriage was optional as far as -- when it comes to the ideal environment for raising children. we decided that adults expression and happiness was more important than the well-being and the needs of children. we removed the stigma from unwed childbearing. withe have a huge problem it. the children who grow up with single parents are more likely to have all kinds of problems than children who grow up in two-parent homes. to a problem of inequality. we have heard about the decline of manufacturing jobs, and immigrants taking our jobs. no one talks about family

structure. it,use when you look at there is a class division. people who go to college, who are upper-class, if you will, tends to be living the same way most americans were back in the 1960's and 1950's. they wait until they are married to have their first child. they get a job, get their education. if you do those things, your chances of being poor are infinitesimal. on the other hand, people who have only some college or a high school degree, or worse if they are a dropout, the rate of illegitimacy is huge. what somelies are -- of the sociologists call fragile families. oft have a whole skein pathologies.

some single mothers do a great job, but the lack of a secure in families is affecting every other part of our society, including problems in the african-american community, where there are so many young men in prison that young women don't have enough men to choose from if they want to marry an african-american guy. a huge issue that affects everything. brian: on another subject, abortion. you refer to a debate held on a long timeloor ago, back in 1999. you also say a congresswoman from colorado somehow kept the pictures of the aborted fetuses often floor of the house. -- off the floor of the house. mona: she attempted to.

distasteful to show images of a board and -- aborted fetuses. after she had her own baby, she became very -- she had mixed views about abortion and she actually said you can't ignore reality by calling a bad taste. brian: here are 30 seconds of the debate. [video clip] was the childhat is separated from the mother, that child is protected by the constitution, it cannot be killed. >> i would make the statement that this constitution, as some of you want to amend it to say life begins at conception, i think when you bring your baby born,when your baby is and there is no such thing as

the baby has -- a all the rights. i'm not willing to amend the constitution to say a fetus is a person. brian: how did that get your attention? to say that a person is not a person until he or she comes home from the hospital is not the traditional understanding of human rights in our society. that that that the mother may not want the child does not mean the child has no right to a life of its own. have -- one ofwe our sons is adopted. he had a loving home waiting for him. brian: should roe v. wade be overturned? mona: yes. brian: will it be overturned? mona: i have no idea. that judicial usurpation of decision-making authority which

belongs to people and representatives would be returned. we would argue it state-by-state, as it should be. brian: you tell us you were a latchkey kid. explain. mona: both of my parents worked. from a very young age i walked myself home from school and let myself in to an empty house and spent hours between 3:00 and 6:00 on my own. it was lonely. i was proud of my mother because she was a psychologist. i knew i was supposed to say i was happy my mother worked. but it was lonely and i did not want that for my kids. brian: how did you differ? mona: i was fortunate to be in a field where i could work from home. i had a great husband.

and we managed. with some help and me working from home, we managed to be able to give our kids what we both hoped they needed when they were young. even today. brian: you refer that your first son, john, you knew you were in trouble when he was more excited to see the nanny that he was to see you. mona: when we first adopted jonathan, we were just feeling our way, we did not know how to be parents or what to do, so we hired a gal two, in five mornings a week so i could work. a few weeks after we adopted him i went to wake him up and get , and he did not seem that thrilled to see me. i was trying to engage with him

and he was an passive. -- impassive. i had a very full schedule planned. when the nanny arrived, he lit up and held out his arms to her. i thought, oh my god, i cannot -- i have to be number one with my son. partly because he was adopted i was more sensitive to the need to build that relationship. i did not give birth to him. everything was based on care. two more, thead old-fashioned way, i realized it is not true of all babies. who takes care of them is who they love. that was important to me. brian: will you write another book? mona: i do not know. brian: how long did this book take total? mona: many years. study, and about

18 months of writing. brian: how hard was it to sell the publisher? mona: a little bit. there was pushed back. because it's not -- i guess it is a different take. the publisher who chose it has been enthusiastic from the beginning. brian: is at a conservative imprint? mona: it is. a conservative imprint of penguin. brian: the title of the book is "sex matters: how modern feminism lost touch with science, love, and common sense. " our guest has been mona charen. thank you very much. mona: thanks for having me. ♪

announcer: for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. programs are also available as c-span podcasts. >> next week on q&a, a freelance journalist discusses his article about a church in newfoundland, pennsylvania. >> c-span's "washington journal." live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. monday morning, health news changesndent discusses to the affordable care act and the state of health care in the

u.s.. and a member of the government accountability office will be here to talk about the fiscal health of the u.s.. live 7:00 eastern monday morning. join the discussion. >> next week at 8:00 pm eastern in prime time. monday, from the atlantic's conference on the american idea. at the rhetoric, coastal elites are viewed as this minority controlling the media, wall street, hollywood, the universities, who love minorities. they want to help the poor in africa, but they don't care about real americans. announcer: tuesday, the weekly standard hosts a conversation on the millennial generation. campusess happening in , not reading certain books because people might get triggered by them, the people

making these decisions are often the baby boomers, not millennials. announcer: wednesday, the ceo.an sachs chair and >> you can go through that fiat currency where they say, this is what. it's worth why couldn't you have. a consensus currency? i do not know bitcoin. goldman sachs, as far as i know, has no bitcoin. america.ay, racism in >> and friday, actor and activist kirk cameron, attorney general jeff sessions speaking at this year's conservative summit in colorado. >> we at the department are hammering criminals and violent groups, especially ms 13, the vicious gang. it's one of the most violent and

inhumane groups in the world. their motto, get this, kill, rape, and control. >> next on c-span.org and c-span radio app. next, british prime minister theresa may taking questions from members of the house of commons. then the potus roundtable on the political leader of the reek -- the week. another chance to see q&a with charented columnist mona talking about her book, "sex matters." during this week's question time, theresa may discusses the uk's ongoing negotiations to leave the european union. she also committed that she supports anglin's push to win the 2018 world cup in russia. this is 45 minutes.